p 

y 




,53 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S 
PAPERS 



BY 
JAMES SCHOULER 



[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, October, 1906.] 



CAMBRIDGE: 
JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

Sluitn'sitg ^xtss. 
lVt06. 



I Adoo 

es- 

^99 3 



.S3 



V 



L 



PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S PAPERS. 



In two articles lately publislied;^ I set forth some of the new 
historical material brought to light in the valuable collection 
of President Andrew Johnson's papers which the Library of 
Congress had recently procured, confining myself, however, to 
the first and crucial year of his stormy administration. In the 
present paper I mean to present some results gathered from a 
full study of that collection. 

While going over those manuscripts, which cover mainly a 
presidential term, one is sadly impressed by the fickleness of 
political courtiers under a government like ours. During 
Johnson's first year of supreme station, and while the policy 
for which he so eagerly worked remained for popular submis- 
sion, letters came to him from every part of the land ; but 
after the elections in the fall of 1866 made it clear that he had 
lost irretrievably his domination in affairs, correspondents 
dropped off and the variety of counsellors ceased. Other 
framers of a policy for the South were waited on ; other 
planets rose in the horizon surrounded by their satellites. 
And whether one pitied or not the Tennesseean's misfortune, 
now that he was brought to bay, most prudent aspirants in 
politics, regardful of their own future, were heedful that speci- 
mens of their handwriting should not get into the White 
House portfolio, to be produced later, perchance, to their preju- 
dice. The wave of executive popularity subsided, and with it 
the freight of miscellaneous correspondence, at first .so huge. 
But two sorts of letters from the people came occasionally 
through the mail, — one, brutal and threatening, from some 
anonymous blackguard, who signed himself (fictitiously, per- 
haps) a Union soldier ; the other, from some superannuated 
voter, who dreamed of Jackson, and exhorted the new Andrew 
to defy Congress and make confusion worse. 

1 " President Johnson anil Negro Suffrage," Outlook, January 13, 1906 ; " Presi- 
dent Johnson's Policy," Outlook, February '6, 1900. 



Two-thirds of both Houses at Washington were already 
united against Andrew Johnson, and, leaving Southern States 
still unrepresented, such was the assured condition of things 
for the remainder of this administration. Already, in the ex- 
cited canvass of 1866, had a project been started for impeach- 
ing the obstinate Executive, and replacing him by Wade, of 
Ohio, President pro tern, of the Senate. Benjamin F. Butler, 
of Massachusetts, who now emerged from retirement in Lowell 
to run for Congress in a neighboring district as a full-fledged 
party Republican, pressed such a plan in campaign speeches 
through New York and Ohio. The President took cognizance 
of such assaults upon him and procured minutes of Butler's 
faulty record from the files of the War Department. Once — 
and once only, it would seem — had the two men held a per- 
sonal correspondence, and that was during the first month after 
Johnson's accession to the Presidency, wdien Butler seems to 
have proposed that General Lee should be arrested and placed 
upon trial for treason.^ Wendell Phillips was another strenu- 
ous pleader for Johnson's impeachment, and he proposed that 
the President should be " sequestered " from office while the 
impeachment trial went on. Cameron, too, who now re-entered 
Congress as a Senator of Pennsylvania, had pledged himself 
to an impeachment policy. 

The President had injured himself and his cause immensely 
in that canvass by his violent harangues upon the stump, as- 
sailing the motives of his opponents in Congress, and "swing- 
ing round the circle " to advocate " my policy." Defeat at 
the polls, however, sobered and steadied him, and he followed 
fairly the advice which now came to him from friendl}^ sources, 
not to try to stem tlie tide, but to yield, and use silently to the 
advantage of the country such opportunities as he might find 
later. Hence his opening message to Congress, in December, 
1866, was unexpectedly calm, dignified, and dispassionate in 
tone. He still claimed stubbornl}^ that his reconstruction plan 
was on principle the light one, but pugnacity he laid aside. 

Lnpeachment discussion was strong this winter (1S66-1867), 

' See General Butler's lonji letter, Ai)ril 25, 1805, written while at Wasliin}?- 
ton, wliicli ar}j;ueil tiiat tiie ellect of Lee's eajjitiilation upon tlie individuals con- 
cerned tlierein, a])i)lii'd only vvliile tliey were " jtrisoners of war"; a condition 
wjiicii ended {so lie claimed), toi^etlier with all stipulated immunity from arrest, 
when the Civil Wiir ceased. (.Johnson MSS.) 



CrltC 

Amorican Ulstoricul Ueviou 
FEB 2 6 192?^ 



while Congress held its sliort and final session, and an inquiry 
was instituted in the House of Representatives. Nothing ap- 
peared upon which to found such procedure, except, perhaps, 
that defamation of Congress before the people which was 
made a definite charge a year later. A vile slander had circu- 
lated to the effect that Johnson was implicated in President 
Lincoln's assassination, but this received its quietus. 

Johnson's discreet silence under the new provocation of his 
radical assailants called forth the sympathy of some emi- 
nent men identified in their day with this Society. Charles 
Francis Adams, still minister at London, wrote home at this 
time a private letter which highly praised the President's 
opening message and the sound financial views expressed in 
Secretary McCulloch's report. Robert C. Winthrop, in a 
friendly epistle to the President himself, reported that a 
clique of gold speculators were said to have raised a fund of 
$50,000 for promoting impeachment in the House of Repre- 
sentatives. Rev. Dr. Chandler Robbins, confiding in the Pres- 
ident's patriotic intentions, but regretting the intemperate 
language he had used on his Western tour, advised confiden- 
tially the publication of a letter to some friend which should 
apologize for the tone of his excited utterances while avowing 
his real sincerity of motive. These and other like tokens of 
good-will from men of standing the President preserved 
among his papers. 

But in the course of the ensuing summer (1867), and while 
the new Congress, now fully organized, had adjourned its ses- 
sion, an antagonism between the President and his Secretary 
of War hastened to a climax. Johnson's papers show that 
when, in March, 1865, he resigned the military governorship 
of Tennessee to be sworn in as Vice-President, friendly cour- 
tesies were interchanged. Secretary Stanton commending in 
the warmest terms the war services Johnson had rendered. 
Together with his colleagues, in fact, Stanton sustained Presi- 
dent Lincoln's generous policy towards the South, while the 
latter was alive ; but soon after Lincoln's death he joined 
Sumner and Stevens in their dissent and came into close co- 
operation with the congressional majoritjs while holding 
tenaciously his place in the cabinet. The anomaly was thus 
presented of a virtual obstructer of the Chief Executive, and 
not an adviser and subordinate, such as our Constitution alone 



6 

recognizes in such relation. This course detached Stanton 
from his colleagues in the cabinet and alienated him more 
and more from the President whom he nominally served. 
In earlier episodes of politics our great War Secretary had 
shown the same disregard of the proprieties of life and of 
those honorable feelings which lead a man to resign his post 
and withdraw where self-respect forbids a faithful service. 
The justification put forward for conduct so singular has 
been an overwhelming sense of duty to the people, to coun- 
try ; and of the measure of that justification, whether in 
1861 or 1867, posterity must judge. Retaining ofiice at the 
present time to thwart and overrule his conmiander-in-chief 
was Stanton's recognized task from the radicals, and he 
shrank neither from the odium nor the treachery of such a 
course. 

Congress had originated and proposed the Fourteenth 
Amendment, and States lately rebellious had most unwisely 
held back from acceding to it; and now came the reconstruc- 
tion act of March 2, 1867, under which military generals were 
to assume command by geographical departments. A cabinet 
council was held in June to consider this act, and all except 
Stanton acceded to the idea that, the President could still 
exert his constitutional discretion. Stanton, however, main- 
tained, boldly and bluntly, that Congress meant here to estab- 
lish military governments at the South to suit its own views 
as against the President, and that it had the power to do so.^ 
There was at this time much ill-feeling in Louisiana, with 
riotous commotion at New Orleans ; and General Sheridan, in 
command there, was accused of political favoritism. The 
situation called for a military change and new militarj' orders. 
Stanton's course was exasperating ; so, after vainly asking his 
resignation, the President displaced him and appointed General 
Grant in his place. 

This displacement, which took effect in the recess of Con- 
gress, was not in strict law a removal, but rather a suspension 
from office, so that General Grant succeeded as Secretary of 
War ad interim. For Congress had, March 2, passed, over 
the President's veto, a " tenure of office " act whicli, took from 

1 Tlicse "cabinet proceoiliiigs " are among tlie .lolnison papers. But tliey 
were published contemporaneously iu the press, as the Annual Cyclopaedia 
shows. 



the President all right to remove incumbents absolutely with- 
out the consent of the Senate. This legislation, which, as to 
cabinet advisers at least, may justly be deemed unconstitu- 
tional, was expressly meant to place a muzzle upon this 
administration, and make Congress, or rather the Senate, 
supreme. When the Houses met in December, the President 
sent to the Senate his reasons for Stanton's suspension, as the 
statute directed ; but he had intended, in case the Senate voted 
adversely, to oppose in the courts upon fundamental grounds 
the return of that obnoxious Secretary .^ 

The victorious North, through the present turmoil between 
President and Congress, relied upon its general in chief, as 
another Washington, to control the situation, and to pacify 
and reunite the country ; and Grant's great reticence, added 
to his transcendent military renown, won him popular confi- 
dence. But his ad interim tenure here involved him in a 
dilemma. The Senate in its present unyielding mood disap- 
proved, as might have been expected, the suspension of its 
own co-operator in the cabinet; whereupon, January 13, 1868, 
Stanton at once reappeared at the War Department to re- 
sume his official status. General Grant yielded up the keys 
immediately, and then notified the President that he had done 
so. While Stanton fortified his repossession of headquarters, 
there to remain, day and night, an angry correspondence en- 
sued between the President and General Grant, over the 
General's precipitate retirement from his post, as though to 
outwit the Chief Executive in forcing Stanton into court to 
test his reinstatement. Andrew Johnson claimed — and in this 
his whole cabinet corroborated his statement — that Grant had 
clearly understood such a purpose on the President's part, and 
had given his consent, so far at least as to allow another ad 
interim appointment to be seasonably made, should he himself 
prefer to stand aside. 

This correspondence, which is preserved in the Library of 
Congress, show^s the amended drafts of letters which came 
from the President himself. The correspondence itself came 
out at once in the press and was republished in the Annual 

1 Meanwhile the President liad compelled his Secretary ad interim to detail 
General Hancock to the military command of Louisiana and send Sheridan 
elsewhere. Grant had protested earnestly on his friend's behalf, but yielded 
obedience. 



8 

Cyclopcedia ; but a perusal of manuscripts may interest those 
of our day who are curious to gather how far the execu- 
tive — a self-taught man of humble antecedents, as all admit 
— relied upon the composition of others. My friend and 
fellow Corresponding Member, Professor Dunning, has shown 
from comparison of drafts that President Johnson's first mes- 
sage to Congress was substantially the work of the historian 
Bancroft.^ But Bancroft left America, early in 1867, to be 
minister to Prussia ; and yet President Johnson's messages 
and state papers continued to show strength and dignity 
through a four years' term replete with controversy. In the 
present correspondence with General Grant we see him press- 
ing his adversary closely and with forceful ability. It is only 
in those maundering speeches which cost him and his sup- 
porters so heavily at the polls in 1866, that the President 
seems really vulgar and ridiculous. Probabl}^, while he called 
upon others to aid him in his public compositions, he had 
trained himself into a strong and effective penman for political 
discussion. His career, we sliould remember, had been long 
and eminent prior to that momentous year which saw him 
associate and then successor of Abraham Lincoln. He was a 
Senator of the United States before the Civil War; both as 
civil and as military governor he had held positions foremost 
in his native State of Tennessee. His public career, advanc- 
ing from grade to grade, was long and remarkable before casu- 
alty exalted him to be head of the nation. But of Johnson it 
may perhaps be said, as one has said of General Hooker, that 
there were in him two distinct persons. The one proud, 
dignified, statesmanlike in action or utterance, displayed the 
man of public experience in mature life, while he kept fully 
his self-control ; the other, and the more intimate, disclosed 
him as boastful and loquacious over his remarkable rise in 
life, as a self-made man, vulgar still, worshipful of his maker. 
But self-controlled or not, Johnson was vehement of purpose, 
wilful to the point of obstinacy when opposed, and while pas- 
sionately devoted to the Union itself, like others in Tennessee 
Avhom the greater Andrew had inspired, he was yet a South- 

^ 2 Proceedings, vol. xix. p. 395. See American Historical Keview, vol. xi. 
p. 951, with its references, favoring tlie idea tliat Mr. Bancroft, instead of com- 
posing the President's message for him, worked into literary shape materials 
which Johnson liimsulf supplied. 



9 

ern man in instincts and associations, and felt, beyond all 
possible experiment to elevate tbe negro, compassion for his 
prostrate white brethren, so many of whom, once disdainful 
of him in patrician pride, now sought him submissively for 
peace and pardon. Johnson in public life was an honest man ; 
and when he became President he refused the Northern gift of 
a coach and equipage, lest he should be placed under obliga- 
tions officially to the givers. He continued upright in politics 
and patriotic; not all the blandishments brought to bear upon 
him could persuade him to Tylerize or to bestow his patron- 
age so as to strengthen the opposition party of 1864, which 
could now freely reorganize. Union men, such as Lincoln 
himself might have selected, composed his cabinet and filled 
the other national offices to the end of his term; "copper- 
heads" made no headway with him. 

The impeachment and trial of President Johnson are matters 
of history. The President's new effort, in February, 1868, to 
displace Stanton, by bringing Adjutant-General Thomas tnto 
charge of the War Department ad interim, was promptly 
followed by an impeachment, which the House based mainly 
upon his assumed violation of the tenure of office act; judicial 
ruling upon the constitutionality of that act, however, having 
been forefended. Among the Johnson papers may be seen 
the draft of the President's answer as filed in the trial plead- 
ings before the Senate. Upon the momentous question 
whether, pending an impeachment trial, a President can be 
rightfully suspended from office by act of Congress, and a 
president pro tern, of the Senate pub in his place, the Presi- 
dent, in November, 1867, consulted his cabinet. What 
answers, if any, were made, I do not discover ; but Congress 
wisely chose to undertake no such revolutionary experiment, 
as some of the radicals had advised ; and certainly any 
attempt thus to sequester the presidential office, especially 
where the people had no successor of their own choice at 
hand, must have been perilous. It would have meant that 
a vindictive congressional faction may at any time, by merely 
instituting an impeachment and keeping the trial postponed, 
hold the Chief Magistracy of tlie nation in their own hands. 

After the House had passed its resolution, we see the 
President following the written advice given him by Senator 
Reverdy Johnson, to employ counsel of imperturbable temper, 



10 

conciliating tongue, and able minds. He himself remained 
outwardly calm, awaiting the result. He did not, as some 
partisans counselled him, respond to a Senate with unrepre- 
sented States by denying its jurisdiction, issuing a proclama- 
tion to the people, and then resigning, as though to forestall 
a decision which must have disqualified him from holding any 
office thenceforth. And had he taken such a course, might 
not Congress have put itself on record as refusing to accept 
his resignation and proceeding by its own methods ? Yet, 
so strongly had the dominating wing of the Senate held its 
party together that, notwithstanding a few exceptional Re- 
publicans were known to have stood out from their colleagues 
wholly on the present issue, a two-thirds vote against the 
President seemed assured and would actually have been 
given, had not one unknown member of that body, from 
Kansas, recorded a negative unexpectedly against his party 
when the poll was taken. That Senator, Ross by name, driven 
into political retirement on the first opportunity, as though 
with the brand of Cain upon his forehead, died not many 
months ago in utter poverty and obscurity ; and yet posterity 
should be grateful to him for what he prevented. 

The test vote at the trial came upon the count which ar- 
raigned Andrew Johnson for abusing Congiess in his speeches 
to the people. This failing, a vote was later taken, and with 
the same result, upon his alleged disregard of the civil tenure 
act in attempting to oust Stanton from his cabinet by the 
Thomas ad interim appointment. Following this new failure 
in the senatorial court, Stanton now resigned of his own 
accord, and General Schofield became his unopposed successor 
in the War Department for the rest of this administration. 
At the Republican convention held May, 1868, in Chicago, 
General Grant was nominated President; and such was the 
universal trust reposed in him in that crisis that the people 
would have chosen liim, against all other candidates, whether 
indorsed by one national party or another, or without a party 
indorsement at all. For the real platform of this campaign, 
which pleased both North and South, was expressed in Grant's 
own letter of acceptance, "Let us have peace." And, follow- 
ing his election, our military President pressed Congress, first 
of all, to repeal the civil tenure act; and it did so presentl}^ 
as though to concede upon reflection that the statute con- 



11 

straints against which Grant's predecessor had struggled and 
had, in consequence, so nearly been expelled from office, were 
indeed unconstitutional. 

I have shown in a former paper i how the reactionary 
foes of Republicanism had tried to get Seward expelled from 
the cabinet, in company with Stanton, and how persistently 
President Johnson disregarded that advice. Whatever his 
own party foes might have said against our astute Secre- 
tary of State, disloyalty to his chief or an ignoble clinging 
to office was not among the faults to be imputed to him. 
When, under Abraham Lincoln, a senatorial committee 
waited upon the President to have Seward sacrificed, the 
Secretary tendered at once his resignation and enabled his 
chief fully to control the situation. And this Johnson collec- 
tion brings newly to light a letter written in Seward's own 
hand, August 23, 1867, which tendered his resignation once 
more to Lincoln's successor, in terms of cordial expression. 
Needless to say, that resignation was not accepted ; and 
promptly at midday. May 16, 1868, after impeachment had 
failed in the Senate, we see the Secretary of State despatch- 
ing a note to the White House which congratulated the 
President on the day's result. Seward exalted this adminis- 
tration and himself by three notable achievements of diplo- 
macy: (1) in bringing French intervention to a close in 
Mexico and compelling Louis Napoleon to withdraw his 
troops, while keeping public intercourse with France un- 
ruffled; (2) in acquiring Alaska from Russia by friendly ces- 
sion; (3) in procuring that Johnson-Clarendon treaty Avith 
Great Britain which, though rejected in the Senate, made the 
entei-ing wedge of indemnity, as later arranged under President 
Grant, for the Alabama spoliations. Political mischief-makers 
during Johnson's term turned their later assaults rather upon 
McCulloch, the Secretary of the Treasury, charging him with 
a cunning duplicity towards the President in his use of the 
patronage. Such charges McCulloch denounced as false ; and 
he, too, strengthened an administration by no means popular, 
through his zealous devotion to business. Attorney-General 
Stanbery, who bore his own rejection by a resentful Senate, 
wrote the President in July, 1868, doubtless with wisdom and 

1 Outlook, February 3, 1906. 



12 

truthfully: "the present cabinet has served you faithfully, 
and no advantage is apparent for a change." 

Johnson's administration came to a tranquil close ; and well 
did he claim, upon retiring, that, like the Hebrew prophet, 
he had robbed and defrauded no one. His wilful and inflex- 
ible temper, his adherence to plans impossible of execution, 
did harm to himself and his supporters, as well as to those 
Southern fellow-citizens whom he had meant to succor. Pos- 
terity admits that the country could never have given willingly 
to an accidental successor the same free hand in reconstruction 
that it meant to allow to Abraham Lincoln ; and so, too, that 
under all circumstances Congress must have had the last word 
in such a policy. But Johnson meant right, and, to a con- 
siderable extent, was right in the course he pursued. 

Though too honorable to court a nomination from opposi- 
tion Democrats, Andrew Johnson would doubtless have liked 
a vindication of some kind from the people. But it was ut- 
terly impossible that he or any other candidate could in 1868 
have defeated General Grant, who stood strongest with the 
people because he had no record at all except a consummate 
military one. This fact the national Democracy, in 1868, 
seemed to apprehend. Pendleton was the favorite of the 
reactionaries, but their convention lurched over to ex-Gover- 
nor Seymour, not hoping seriously to choose him President, 
but seeking to make sure of the great Northern State of New 
York with its local patronage. President Johnson left the 
White House, in March, 1869, and returned to his native 
State. When, a few months later, at the State election, Ten- 
nessee threw off radicalism and went conservative, this whole 
country was startled by the likelihood that her legislature 
would send Andrew Johnson back to Washington to sit at 
once among tlie Senators who had voted for impeachment, and 
renew, if he liked, his issue of veracity with the whilom ad 
interim Secretary of War, now installed at the White House. 
Strong pressure was brought upon Tennessee to avert such a 
situation ; and by "an infamous combination," as his personal 
friends styled it, Johnson was defeated in the legislature by a 
majority of two and a neutral went to Wasliington in his 
stead. But the ex-President regained steatlily his hold u{)on 
the State he had served so long and intimately. His oppor- 
tunity returned, and Tennessee's legislature, in January, 1875, 



13 

chose him to the United States Senate, — the only instance 
hitherto in our annals in which an ex-President has gained 
such a call from retirement. But the honor came too late ; 
Johnson's sands of life were nearly run out; and though 
sworn in, at Washington, to take his seat for a brief extra 
session, he died during the recess of that summer, July 30, 
1875, shortly after returning home. 



